


nothing but the wild rain

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 17:46:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: "The internet, Aziraphale!" Crowley says. "This is what the internet is for. This is, quite literally, what the internet is for.""Oh," Aziraphale says, and Crowley knows, he just knows, that Aziraphale is going to say something about how it's jolly useful for hard-to-find first editions and tickets for the Last Night of the Proms.or, Aziraphale and Crowley find sex confusing.





	nothing but the wild rain

**Author's Note:**

> betaed v efficiently by soupytwist!

It’s a wet Sunday not long after the end of the world that Crowley goes for it. He pushes Aziraphale up against the brick walls and grimed windows of the bookshop and kisses him like his life depends on it, not as a dramatic turn of phrase but as though it really does, that their continued co-existence in a world without prophecy depends on this one remaining great thing.

It’s still possible he’s misjudged it. He can picture it exactly: the angelic glare and suggestion that he needs to come inside for a cup of tea and a nice calming lie-down. 

But Aziraphale’s lips part under his, his hands come up and he moves Crowley away from him, not to push him away but to hold him where Aziraphale can look into his eyes. The rain runs down between them, into his eyes and mouth, into Aziraphale’s mouth. It has that blood-metallic taste of all water in London. Crowley can feel Aziraphale’s fingers in his hair, the strength of the body he wears, the air charged with electricity. Aziraphale lets him go and they sink back into the kiss, which is still a proper first kiss, despite the unusual theological circumstances. It’s messy, inept, nice. Some part of Crowley’s brain is yelling that he’s _kissing Aziraphale on the street_ because he’s _gone insane_. But if he has, Aziraphale has too, and Aziraphale is supposed to be the clever one. _Take that, brain_ , he thinks, proud of having outsmarted himself, and revisits the going-insane theory just as it becomes a moot point anyway. Aziraphale makes a small noise of pleasure, close enough to feel as well as hear, and all the neurons in Crowley’s brain misfire indiscriminately.

It’s a good kiss, is the point. They come up for air eventually and stare at each other across three inches of space. 

“For goodness’ sake, Crowley, you’re quite soaked,” Aziraphale says, as though he doesn’t look like the thirty-ninth day of the Ark himself, and leads the way into the bookshop. He waves an imperious hand at the lights so they all come on miraculously, and does the same thing to the door, which closes and bolts behind them. Crowley thinks that if Aziraphale is going to carry on like this, every sous chef in London is going to have to start bucking up their ideas.

He snorts at the thought – Crowley is a demon, demons always find themselves hilarious – and Aziraphale turns. “What?”

“Nothing,” Crowley says, “nothing, you, everything” – expecting Aziraphale to bristle. But Aziraphale looks blank, then rueful, then amused, so they’re both sort of laughing, and by the time the towels have materialised Aziraphale is just fussy, familiar Aziraphale, and Crowley is feeling slightly embarrassed, and they’re both back to how they’ve always been.

“Well,” Aziraphale says, when they’re both dry.

“Well,” Crowley says.

“What do we do about _that_?” Aziraphale says.

Water drips off his hair. He looks ruffled, uncertain. Perhaps not exactly how they’ve always been.

*

It's not as though this has never come up before. They've been – together, in a manner of speaking, since Aziraphale was the angel of the eastern gate and Crowley was... squishier. There’s even a painting in one of the Louvre's attics that purports to be of the _Angel Aziraphael and the Lascivious Serpent_. (It is a very... naked painting. If it ever goes on public display Crowley plans to buy all available tickets for the opening day of the exhibition and present them to Aziraphale as a bouquet of paper flowers.) People made certain assumptions about them in ancient Greece, in first-century Palestine, in the discreet gentlemen’s clubs of the eighteenth century. In the summer of 1962, Aziraphale rescued a boy who'd been beaten up and left for dead on the street outside of the bookshop. Crowley remembers that the kid trusted Aziraphale for a reason that didn't have to be spoken aloud.

So it’s not that this is new. It’s just that it, too, was something that never had to be spoken aloud. Aziraphale fusses. Crowley paces the floor. They’re both uncomfortable.

“Maybe it’s because of the world ending,” Crowley says at last. He looks up through the gaps in the shutters, then back at Aziraphale.

“The world nearly ends and you kiss me in the rain,” Aziraphale says, with more scepticism than that remark really deserves, Crowley thinks. Lots of human films and TV go like that. World ending, kissing in the rain. They filmed that bit in _Four Weddings and a Funeral_ somewhere near here. They went to rubberneck; Aziraphale was very interested. The world wasn’t ending in that one, of course. _Armageddon_ had strawberries. Crowley likes strawberries.

He’s losing his mind. “What I mean,” he says, “is that the world is getting less occult. Ethereal,” he amends, when Aziraphale opens his mouth. “It’s becoming more human. They’re having an influence on us, rather than the other way around.”

Aziraphale nods, which gives Crowley more confidence in the theory. Angels and demons, walking eternally through a world charged with humanity. Water conducts electricity. No wonder Crowley suddenly felt like a living short-circuit, yearning for something to complete it. 

Not just any old something, either. He looks at the angel out of the corner of his eye. “We could do it again,” he says carefully. “And… more.”

"We don't have to," Aziraphale says. "That's a human thing, too. Not to."

Crowley considers. "I want to try," he says.

*

Soho has changed over the last few decades. It's more salubrious, less seedy, less suffused with sex shops. Which one might think were a good thing for the residents of the area, if one weren't plagued by the angel Aziraphale, who wants relevant books on the subject. "The internet, Aziraphale!" Crowley says. "This is what the internet is for. This is, quite literally, what the internet is for."

"Oh," Aziraphale says, and Crowley knows, he just _knows_ , that Aziraphale is going to say something about how it's jolly useful for hard-to-find first editions and tickets for the Last Night of the Proms, and he takes a deep breath and says:

"If you really want to.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says brightly. “I just like the feel of something real under my hands.” 

Crowley cannot tell if that is intended to be innuendo. He can't. It's an alarming lack of knowledge to have. It turns out London does still have sex shops, but none of them are helpful. There's a place at Euston which looks so profoundly horrible that neither of them wants to go inside for fear of contracting something itchy. There's another one near Hoxton that won't let men in who aren't accompanied by women. "I'm not," Aziraphale says, " _we're_ not" – but Crowley doesn't feel up to arguing the case for gender as a category error at this particular moment. There's a place up in Highbury that is, astonishingly, closed on Sundays. It has a sign outside that reads: "We Buy Bizarre Porn".

"Why?" Crowley asks, of the universe at large. " _Why_ do you buy bizarre porn?"

"Some people like Richmal Crompton, Crowley," Aziraphale says reprovingly, because apparently in his head this is the same sort of thing. His eye is caught by something glossy and black in the neighbouring window. "My, that looks like it would... chafe."

"Angel," Crowley says, helplessly. He's not sure when they became equally baffled by the modern world. Somewhere between the gavotte and the blockchain. "Let's go home and try this for ourselves."

"All right," Aziraphale says, lightly. As though they didn't just agree to cross a line after six thousand years. The thought makes Crowley shiver, not unpleasantly. Aziraphale's smile is distant and full of promise.

*

Back at the bookshop, it's quiet. Everywhere round here is closed on a Sunday. "Do you want to–" Aziraphale says, politely, gesturing upstairs, just as Crowley says, "Shouldn't we...?"

They stare at each other, awkwardly. Crowley feels strange and desperate, wanting either the simplicity of the unwavering millennia or the passion of the rain, but not this in-between, this self-conscious halfway. In the end it's Aziraphale who decides that something must be done. He leads Crowley upstairs to his bedroom – while angels and demons don’t need to sleep, they both do find it enjoyable – and kisses him, his hands coming up as they did the last time, raking through his hair. Crowley responds, enthusiastic but inept. There's a bumping together of noses. Aziraphale pulls away for a moment, takes away Crowley's dark glasses, puts them on his bedside table. It’s an intimate gesture, but not more so than the thousand small things Aziraphale has done for Crowley in all their shared existence. 

The next kiss is better, easier. Aziraphale makes a small humming sound against Crowley’s mouth, which makes Crowley remember doing the same thing when they were pressed up against the brick wall. For a second he has it back, that intensity, that need for something unarticulated. 

But it’s still all terribly self-conscious. They come apart again, staring at each other. “This doesn’t–” Crowley says, as Aziraphale says, “I don’t–”

For a second it seems like they’re going to give up and go back to their Sunday evening, perhaps making omelettes or seeing if there’s anything good on the television. But Crowley is frustrated, wanting to feel at least like they’ve _tried_ , that they went through some sort of checklist before they let it go. 

Aziraphale meets his eyes and says, “I wish we had a book.”

He’s not about to admit it, but Crowley understands why he wants one. A book of first principles, that would break this down into categories, with an index for “conventionally male-bodied people, two (2)”. He takes a deep breath, vanishes both of their clothes – Aziraphale gives him a look – and says, “Come here, angel.”

But it doesn’t work. It’s no real revelation for Crowley to see Aziraphale naked: angels only ever wore clothes out of habit back at the dawn of things, and since then there have been the Roman baths, post-Restoration Japanese onsen, other such occasions for Aziraphale to rub his eyes and say, _gosh, isn’t this relaxing_. So is this. It’s nice. It doesn’t light Crowley up like a torch, like in the stories. Aziraphale makes the occasional indication of enjoyment, but it’s not better than ice cream, or cheese. 

Aziraphale finally leans back onto his elbows, fluffs a pillow and settles himself onto it. “My dear,” he says. “This has not been one of our better ideas.”

“We’re doing it wrong,” Crowley says, frustrated. He’s watched a lot of porn at various times but that was in a professional capacity; his last foray into the industry had involved encouraging the uptake of cosmetic surgery and the use of unnecessary furniture. He’s open to the possibility they’re missing something. “We must be. Right?”

“Why are you asking me?” Aziraphale asks, still looking up at the ceiling. He’s lovely, Crowley thinks. Utterly ridiculous. “One would have thought your side would be the experts. Lust and what-have-you.”

“You’re the ones who’re so interested in what everyone does in bed,” Crowley hisses back, imagining angels going through a checklist. Oral sex, dubious; anal sex, very dubious; other sex acts, morality thereof on application. 

“ _I’m_ not,” Aziraphale says, not denying it in the general case. “I think it’s all terribly complicated. Love and sex and all that.”

Crowley reaches out and pushes Aziraphale’s hair out of his eyes. Love is not the problem, he thinks. Angels are made for nothing but love and Crowley was an angel once. Perhaps this isn’t just in their natures, and what happened in the rain was just a moment of strange madness. Crowley bought a waterbed in the seventies. Aziraphale spent part of the seventeenth century in a tam o’ shanter. It’s probably the same sort of thing.

*

A week later, the whole affair hasn’t quite slipped from Crowley’s mind but it’s been displaced by other things, including a mishap in respect of the plumbing at Glastonbury, which Crowley was very proud of, a motorway traffic jam so time-honoured in its conformation that he did it before he got out of bed, and a minor miracle Aziraphale asked him to perform in a nightclub in Fitzrovia. (A man said some nasty, human things to his girlfriend; three girls she’d met that evening in the queue for the toilets told her she was beautiful and paid for her taxi. Crowley never even had to do the miracle.) 

It’s been a busy week, is the point, it’s pissing it down again, and Crowley is indulging in some well-deserved sloth. Another thing he’d never admit: he likes falling asleep to the sound of the rain. It reminds him of long ago things. 

He dreams of flying. 

When he wakes up, the epiphany is fully-formed inside his mind. He launches himself outside, looks at the Bentley, looks down at the keys in his hand, and decides to run all the way to the bookshop. It is a monumentally stupid idea. When he gets there, the sole customer takes one look at the mad mud-spattered apparition and flees into the deluge.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale waves a hand to bring on the electric light and remove the mud from Crowley’s clothes. “What—“ 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupts. “I’ve had an idea. I’m about to vanish your clothes. Say no if you don’t want me to.”

Aziraphale peers at him. “Crowley, are you feeling all right? Do you need a glass of water?”

“Yes or no, angel,” Crowley says impatiently. He half-expects Aziraphale to sigh and throw his hands up in despair and go off to put the kettle on without answering the question. 

“Must you be so dramatic, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “Yes.”

Crowley takes a second to register it. He takes Aziraphale by the hand and leads him upstairs, vanishing both of their clothes on the way. He makes Aziraphale sit down on the edge of the bed and runs a single fingertip along his shoulder, sweeping downwards in a curve along his spine.

Aziraphale breathes in sharply.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley says. He’s not sure that this will work; he might just have hurt Aziraphale by mistake, or made him remember that he’s hungry or he left the gas on.

But Aziraphale turns his head and says: “Do that again.”

Crowley does. Again, the sharp intake of breath, and a change in Aziraphale’s expression to one of intent concentration. Crowley’s knuckles curl against Aziraphale’s skin.

“What,” Aziraphale says.

“Your wings.” Crowley runs his fingers along where the pinion feathers are, when they're visible. For a second, they are visible, brought into existence by the fact of the touch. Crowley had no idea that would happen and it’s as revelatory as his dream of flying. Crowley and Aziraphale can’t have sex like humans because they _aren’t_ humans. 

This time, Crowley uses his whole hand, the curve of his knuckles against the apex of bone, remembering the imagined checklist. Oral, anal, other. He and Aziraphale are certainly… other. 

"Crowley, I don't think you should do that," Aziraphale says, and Crowley pulls his hands away like he’s been burned. He knows all the roads to hell and this is where a lot of them start. 

But Aziraphale reaches out and pulls his hand back to where it was. "I said, I don't think you should, not, _don't_."

"That is not a helpful semantic distinction at this point in the proceedings,' Crowley says, and adds, "you bastard" because it felt like an unfinished sentence. “Why not?"

Aziraphale shivers in a way that makes Crowley think… things. "It might get me into trouble."

"Gabriel tried to burn you in a column of a flame, how much more trouble could you be in?" Crowley asks. 

"Quite," Aziraphale says, still shivering, which is what brings Crowley to temptation. He holds Aziraphale steady, hands on both of his shoulders, in the right place to look right into his eyes, then rakes both sets of fingernails down the points of adjoinment of Aziraphale’s wings. Aziraphale’s mouth opens, his back arches and there’s suddenly a whole genre of Christmas card that Crowley will never look at in the same way again.

“Oh, _fuck_ , Crowley,” Aziraphale says, now curled in on himself so he looks like the backdrop to a painting of the temptation of Christ. His wings are halfway-there, translucent. "Why is this… why?”

Aziraphale in a state of incoherence is such a pleasure that it takes Crowley a second to consider what he’s saying, and when he does, lands on a memory fragile from long burial. Angels and demons can’t reach the back of their own wings by themselves. It’s part of the whole living metaphor thing. Fellowship and love and all of that, so they need each other’s help to work out the tangles. 

“I think this looks different for us, than for them,” he says, at last, knowing Aziraphale will figure it out for himself now Crowley has pushed him in the right direction. “Even if you had found your book, Aziraphale. It wouldn’t know what to say about us.”

“ _Is_ there anything to say, for us?” Aziraphale asks, but Crowley can see the understanding in his face. “No, wait, I see. It’s their world now, not ours.”

The electricity in the air. The change. Human making their angels more like themselves, susceptible to passion as well as love.

“But we’re still us,” Crowley insists. “You and me. _Us_.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, lovingly. “Yes. Crowley, what do you want?”

It’s exactly the same tone as when they’re in a café and it’s his turn to go up to the counter. 

“I don’t know if it will work on me,” Crowley says, disarmed. It might be more momentary madness. It might be one of the things that were lost with the fall.

“It will,” Aziraphale says, and it does.

*

Afterwards, there’s tea. Aziraphale can’t figure out food delivery so Crowley goes on JustEat and picks something from an Indian restaurant they both like. It’s still raining, like when the world began.

“One day, we’ll be just like them,” Crowley says, gesturing through the window glass at the mist-and-human-filled city beyond. 

“I hope not,” Aziraphale says. “Not _just_ like them. It seems very tiring.”

Crowley smiles. “Do you want to do it again?”

“Order Indian food?”

“No,” Crowley says, “ _that_.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Aziraphale says, checking all the windows are closed and no water is dripping onto the books. “We should give the delivery man a very large tip.”

“We will,” Crowley says. He presses send on the order and waits for whatever comes next.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: nothing but the wild rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099098) by [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/pseuds/such_heights)




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